Was that what I wanted for Alex?
No.
The answer came immediately, viscerally, and it pissed me off. Because I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t give a fuck what happened to her beyond getting the money back and dealing with the Poseidon problem. She was a thief. A liar. Someone who had tried to steal from us and thought she could get away with it. She deserved whatever she got. But when I thought about her becoming like that brunette, empty-eyed and broken, existing only to serve, something in my chest tightened. Rebelled.
You’re getting soft,I told myself.Morpheus is right. You’re getting attached.
Maybe I was. Or maybe I just recognized that breaking Alex completely would be a waste. That turning her into another mindless club whore would be like taking a wild animal and caging it until it forgot how to hunt.
She was interesting because she fought. Because she was smart, sharp, and dangerous. Because even now, even after everything I had done to her, there was still fire in her eyes. If I extinguished that fire completely, what would be left?
Nothing worth keeping.
I grabbed a beer from behind the bar, twisted off the cap, and took a long pull. The cold liquid did nothing to ease the knot of tension in my gut.
Make her understand or get rid of her.
Morpheus’ words echoed in my head, a constant reminder of the choice I was going to have to make. But maybe there was a third option. Maybe I could find a way to keep her without breaking her completely. Keep her dangerous but controlled. Keep her fire burning but directed where I wanted it.
It was a dangerous game. The kind of game that could blow up in my face spectacularly.
But then again, I had never been afraid of danger.
I finished my beer and set the empty bottle on the bar. Around me, the club continued its nightly ritual of debauchery and excess. Brothers laughing, fucking, drinking, living like there was no tomorrow. Because for men like us, there might not be. We lived fast and violently, taking what we wanted while we could, because we knew that any day could be our last. A rival club. A bad job. A bullet with our name on it. That was the life we had chosen, and now I had dragged Alex into it. The question was:Could she survive it?
Could I make her understand what this world demanded without destroying everything that made her worth keeping?
I didn’t have the answer yet, but I had time to figure it out.
Seventy-two hours, Morpheus had said. Seventy-two hours to make her understand.
I headed back toward the stairs, leaving the gathering room and its casual brutality behind. My brothers didn’t notice me leave. They were too caught up in their own pleasures, their own indulgences. As I climbed the stairs, I thought about Alex lying in my bed. Still restless. Still desperate. Still suffering from the denial I had inflicted on her.
Tomorrow, I would push her further. Test her limits. See how much she could take before she broke, and maybe I would figure out how to keep her without losing myself in the process.
But tonight? Tonight I was just going to lie next to her and listen to her suffer.
Because that was what I did.
That was who I was, and she needed to understand if she had any hope of surviving in my world.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alex
The second I heard the bedroom door click shut, I was up.
My body moved before my mind fully caught up, adrenaline flooding my system and washing away the fog of exhaustion and frustrated arousal. I didn’t know how long he would be gone. Five minutes, ten, an hour, but it didn’t matter. This was my chance. Maybe my only chance.
I crossed the room in three quick strides, my bare feet silent on the cold floor. His computer sat on the desk against the far wall, the screen dark but the tower humming softly. My hands shook as I moved the mouse and watched the monitor flicker to life.
Please don’t have a password. Please don’t have a password.
The login screen appeared, and my heart sank. But when I clicked on his username, the desktop loaded without asking for credentials.
Stupid. So fucking stupid of him.
Or maybe he just didn’t think I would have the balls to try this.
